An often enjoyable but ultimately forgettable romance.
A light, entertaining novel that’s part love story, part travelogue.
When perennial playboy David Summers meets journalist Catherine Klein, their attraction is immediate and powerful. The two soon start meeting in cities all over the world for clandestine rendezvous, with David never suspecting that Catherine harbors a secret. It’s one that’s more suburban than steamy: She’s married to a stay-at-home father who tends to their young son, Billy. Catherine promises herself that she’ll either end the affair or tell David the truth, but she finds herself dangerously hooked on the relationship’s animal eroticism—until an explosive confrontation forces her hand. The story gets off to a somewhat slow start, describing glamorous locales in Rio de Janeiro, Paris and Los Angeles in excruciating detail while all but neglecting character development. Scene after scene features impossibly beautiful people in impossibly expensive clothing enjoying themselves in impossibly exclusive bars and hotels, establishing the work as pure escapist fantasy. However, as Catherine and David’s relationship intensifies, the story gains a bit more depth, although Catherine herself remains disappointingly underdeveloped. The story could have depicted her as complex and conflicted, but readers are told early on that she finds life with her husband stultifying and that she yearned to be away from her son even shortly after his birth, and as a result, the affair comes off as somewhat trite. Still, the erotic interplay between Catherine and David is satisfyingly sizzling, and some of their later trips are simply glorious—particularly a South African jaunt. The book provides some elegantly spare insights (“I sometimes worry that we are a relationship of vacations, of interconnected summer romances”) but also some overblown prose (“In the night sky, a cry erupts that ricochets from the far reaches of the horizon like a high-pitched whale [sic] released from her soul that aches in its tone before coming to a desperate guttural surge she repeats into the night sky as she comes into view”). Unfortunately, when this “relationship of vacations” gets to a point where it either must become something more or dissolve altogether, the lackluster conclusion lacks emotional resonance.
An often enjoyable but ultimately forgettable romance.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1483404110
Page Count: 284
Publisher: Lulu
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles...
Sisters in and out of love.
Meghann Dontess is a high-powered matrimonial lawyer in Seattle who prefers sex with strangers to emotional intimacy: a strategy bound to backfire sooner or later, warns her tough-talking shrink. It’s advice Meghann decides to ignore, along with the memories of her difficult childhood, neglectful mother, and younger sister. Though she managed to reunite Claire with Sam Cavenaugh (her father but not Meghann’s) when her mother abandoned both girls long ago, Meghann still feels guilty that her sister’s life doesn’t measure up, at least on her terms. Never married, Claire ekes out a living running a country campground with her dad and is raising her six-year-old daughter on her own. When she falls in love for the first time with an up-and-coming country musician, Meghann is appalled: Bobby Austin is a three-time loser at marriage—how on earth can Claire be so blind? Bobby’s blunt explanation doesn’t exactly satisfy the concerned big sister, who busies herself planning Claire’s dream wedding anyway. And, to relieve the stress, she beds various guys she picks up in bars, including Dr. Joe Wyatt, a neurosurgeon turned homeless drifter after the demise of his beloved wife Diane (whom he euthanized). When Claire’s awful headache turns out to be a kind of brain tumor known among neurologists as a “terminator,” Joe rallies. Turns out that Claire had befriended his wife on her deathbed, and now in turn he must try to save her. Is it too late? Will Meghann find true love at last?
Briskly written soap with down-to-earth types, mostly without the lachrymose contrivances of Hannah’s previous titles (Distant Shores, 2002, etc.). Kudos for skipping the snifflefest this time around.Pub Date: May 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-345-45073-6
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2003
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
